


The Very Core

by AeonDelirium



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Blood and Gore, Ethical Dilemmas, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Qyburn is in it what more can I say, Short, Squick, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:47:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonDelirium/pseuds/AeonDelirium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Pycelle catches a fellow maester at the Citadel conducting rather unorthodox research.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Very Core

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedneighbour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedneighbour/gifts).



> So I actually wrote the first one or two paragraphs of this months ago when [crookedneighbour](http://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedneighbour) was talking about Qycelle a lot, but never found it in me to do anything with it.

“Hush,” he said very softly, almost lovingly. “Not very long now. Not very long at all.”  
Her hand fell back when he touched it with his fingertips, leaving crimson stains on his pale, shaven face. He did not look up, yet somehow Pycelle knew, with terrible, inexplicable certainty _knew_ that he was aware of him standing in the door. Watching. Knowing. A tremor went through him, a sudden chill gripping his heart.  
  
He had seen things, yes, had _done_ things, had opened the womb of a dead woman to bring forth her living child, had sewn –  
  
Qyburn looked at him then, unblinking, dissecting him with his eyes as it was his nature to cut open and pull apart and study.  
“The archmaesters will never know,” he said simply. There was nothing uncertain to his voice, nothing probing. It was neither question nor plea. There, in that moment, filled by oppressive heat and the girl’s fading breath, it was truth.  
Pycelle’s lip quivered beneath his moustache, the outrageousness of the situation so profound he felt a wave of weakness ripple through his limbs, legs nearly buckling underneath him.  
“Do you presume to threaten me?”  
A smile crept across Qyburn’s face. He was almost handsome like that, smiling, his eyes warmer and kinder than they had any right to be. If it had not been for the smear of blood on his cheek.  
“I presume to speak the truth,” he replied, and his mirth did not extend to his voice. “It is you who would presume to threaten my research.”  
Pycelle bristled. “You … you call this _research_? This is –”  
“Monstrous?” Qyburn suggested, quirking an eyebrow as he turned away. “Perhaps it is, yes. But it is so much more than just that.”  
  
He returned to the table on soft soles, wiping his fingers on a clean piece of cloth before he laid hands on the girl again, carefully opening the gap in her chest. Her legs twitched and trembled, and a soft, wet sound of pain rose from some place inside her, but she was too weak to struggle or scream.  
  
Pycelle watched in horror as the other man’s face changed, as if illuminated by a light shining within, his eyes two glittering pools of wonder in his skull.  
“Look at her,” he breathed, the slightest tremor to his voice. “Is she not beautiful?”  
And Pycelle did look at her, hesitant at first, reluctant as though his eyes commanded him not to taint them with such a sight, not to expose them to a crime of such vileness as was laid out in front of him. In the end, he could not resist. He looked at her, quivering flesh and thick, hot blood and snow-white skin. His stomach churned with sickness, making him bite down on his tongue in order not to retch.  
  
Qyburn, meanwhile, remained utterly enchanted.  
“How can we hope to heal the living,” he asked quietly, “if we only know the dead? How can we treat an illness if we do not strike until it is too late?” He looked up once more, boring into Pycelle with a look like a knife, stepping back around the table, his hands still stained with blood.  
  
“Her death might spare many lives.” There was no smile now, no warmth, only cool determination. Perhaps it was only a trick his dazed mind played on him, but Pycelle might have said Qyburn had grown, that his shoulders appeared broader somehow, straighter. Standing before him as he voiced his appeal, he seemed to have an air of greatness about him that was usually hidden away beneath his amiable appearance. _Almost formidable indeed._  
“How many could have been saved,” he went on, stepping closer, so close Pycelle felt his body tense. “How many could have been spared the Spring Sickness, had the Citadel’s hands not been bound, not been _chained_?”  
  
Pycelle flinched when the other man reached for his chain with his blood-stained fingers, twisting it around his hand until it tightened, and tightened, and tightened again until he could not breathe.  
Every link he had forged for every hardship he had overcome, every tedious volume he had consumed, every ounce of pride cast into metal, in the end they were just that. A chain.  
He knew he ought to struggle, ought to fight, ought to stop this madness somehow, but his limbs would not move to do his bidding. Instead, he remained pressed against the doorframe with the other man up against him, an almost obscene display, if anyone were to walk by at this early hour.  
  
Qyburn watched his face for a long moment, his studied gaze no doubt making note of the reddening skin, the bulging eyes, the gaping mouth, all signs of impending asphyxiation. There was something off about his expression, this terrible _hunger_ still about him, and for a heartbeat Pycelle almost saw himself on his table, taking the girl’s place as this demon in human skin cut him open inch by inch. He could not help but wonder how it would feel, besides the pain of course, to have his very core laid bare like that, to have Qyburn’s hands inside him, probing, digging …  
  
It took a moment for his brain to register the fact that he could breathe again, and when it did his entire body was seized by a fit of coughing and gasping and sputtering nearly violent enough to turn his lungs inside out. He was left shaking.  
  
“The archmaesters will never know.”  
It was only then that he became aware of the other man once more, still standing far too close, his expression calm and even as ever, save for the tiniest spark in his eye. Almost as though … almost as though he had _enjoyed_ this perverse assault, Pycelle thought with a shudder, wrestling for a moment with a pang of shame at the dizziness he felt. It was not only from the choking.  
  
In the end, he managed a weak nod, the chain chafing painfully against his throat where it had no doubt left bruises to remember this encounter by. Qyburn flashed him a brief smile, before he returned to his patient on the table.  
“Ah,” he said softly, sounding almost wistful as he bent over her silent form. His fingers left two stains of red on her pale lids when he closed her eyes. “It would seem this one is spent.”


End file.
